Monday, 15 August 2016

I am still here. Life gets in the way of the blog sometimes. You know, the best intentions etc.

I am writing this to you from the local laundromat on my 45th wedding anniversay. Our washing machine died yesterday. It was a front loader full of water that would no longer drain. Needless to say flooding happened when I opened the door to fetch the sopping wet clothes. Lots of towels later we decided the laundromat was the easiest.

We have not used a laundromat since we were first married and too broke for a machine. Times have changed. We went out today and bought a new one to be delivered tomorrow. The things we take for granted.

I am happily sitting in the warm winter sun, with chocolate and a pocket full of dollar coins washing all the wet towels we used to clean up the flood.

My sister was here for two months. She has now gone home to California. I miss her. I won't write of all we did because it would be longer than Shakespeare and not quite so eloquent. So close your eyes and pretend...

... clean slate.

Needless to say we had a very good time. I have four weeks before meeting a friend at the hotel in Terminal Five at Heathrow airport to do a two week Cornwall road trip and then a two week drive around Ireland. So the travels continue.

I won't be actively hunting Penguin books for my collection but no doubt if I come across something I don't have in the first 1000 series in a good, first published condition it may well be living in Tasmania in the years to come.

I have not been reading a lot as I have been travelling between Cairns, Port Douglas, Queensland, Alice Springs, Uluru (Ayres Rock) and Tasmania.

As well we re-did the lock up in my back yard. The lock up is a long patio area behind my house that we enclosed with a lot of lattice and laser light. It has outddoor furnitire and cat things as it is the outdoor area for our cats. With the incredible winds we get it is generally a mess and turned into a storage area. My sister and I cleaned it out and to make a long story short it is now an outdoor room with comfortable furnitire in which to sit and read, have coffees or wine and the occasional bbq. I must put up a photo.

The cats like it with their tall climbing frames, litter and food dishes. It gets the sun much of the day and is generally quiet when the local hoons are not reving their cars up and down the road. Rain on the roof also sounds nice.

Mr. Penguin was visiting family overseas and was out of our hair. We planted native plants for the birds and bees, stabilized fences that were wobbly and set up two Buddhist areas in the back to provvide some good feng shui. One can never have too much good feng shui. We were "Sparking Joy" everywhere. Marie Kondo would be proud.

Now having all the jobs I have been too overwhelmed to approach completed, life feels much lighter. It is about time to relax and read.

Our book club is reading The Watchman of Filigree St and I must say I am loving it. I am not far enough into it yet to get the gist of the story but I do enjoy the characters and one of them lives in a boarding house. I love boarding house tales.

I am continuing to watch You Tube videos about tricks in Photoshop and I am closer to getting a gold vote in the photo challenges voted on by other club members but not there yet. . Each month there is a challenge. One can earn either a bronze, silver or gold. Have earned several bronze and silvers I am now on a quest for gold. Its fun to try for it.

Well, for the first post back in awhile this is a good catch up one. Back to Penguin hunting, reading and bookshops now things have died down for a few weeks. We will see where we go from here.